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She Blogged By NightThu, 29 Mar 2018 14:56:06 +0000en-UShourly137047056The Law and Jake Wade (1958)http://shebloggedbynight.com/2017/law-jake-wade-1958/
Thu, 12 Oct 2017 02:02:04 +0000http://shebloggedbynight.com/?p=10533 The Law and Jake Wade is not just a gorgeous film to look at but an exciting tale, and a solid entry in the American Western genre.

It’s 5:40 in the morning when Jake Wade (Robert Taylor) rides into town, intent on breaking Clint Hollister (Richard Widmark) out of jail. Clint’s no pal, however, but a partner in crime from Jake’s past outlaw days, and Jake is hoping this breakout will settle an old score between them. After the duo escape and go their separate ways, Jake returns to his job as marshal in a nearby town. His quiet, comfortable life is interrupted when Clint Hollister tracks him down and forces Jake to lead him to the money they took in a bank robbery several years earlier. Hollister’s gang cheerfully drag Jake’s fiancée Peggy (Patricia Owens) along as a hostage.

In a genre so often used to examine modern sociocultural issues, everything from capitalism to the Cold War, The Law and Jake Wade (1958) stood out at the time for being a Western with very few pretensions. What’s extraordinary about Jake Wade is its adherence to so many standard Western tropes, which it then reassembles and reframes into a wholly new work. Part character study, part landscape Western and part action adventure, Jake Wade incorporates them all without inconsistency, resulting in a beautiful, entertaining film.

Though the posters for The Law and Jake Wade (1958) heavily advertised the fact that the film was in color, the palette is delightfully subdued. It’s almost monochrome at times, with washed out reds and blues blending into the gorgeous scenery. All the characters are carefully clad in hats, gloves and long sleeves, making sure they’re well-covered so their skin tone won’t contrast with the natural palette. Clint’s light denim blue shirt and sand-colored leather pants blend right into the dusty, faded land around him, while the brown jackets and hats of others are the same shade as the craggy rocks behind. Actors’ faces really pop in close-ups, especially Richard Widmark with his blonde hair and perfect white teeth, and Taylor’s ice-blue eyes.

Jake Wade is a beautiful picture to look at, in part because much of the cast is not beautiful, but rather interesting and compelling. Robert Taylor is almost unrecognizable, not only from his early days in Hollywood, but from the romantic period pieces he had done a few years prior to Jake Wade. One doesn’t expect him to look like the same skinny kid dancing in Artists and Models (1937), of course, but the changes in his appearance over just a few years in the 1950s were striking; by the end of the decade, his facial features were weathered and harsh, his frame bulkier, his voice deeper. It made him perfect for Westerns, as did his acting style which, unlike his appearance, had hardly changed over the years. There are those who find Taylor a bit stiff, but in Jake Wade, his trademark reserve absolutely works. Wade was a cool criminal before, the kind of guy who could shrug off a lot of pretty rotten things. He was also the kind of guy who had a limit to the brutality of the life he had chosen, and not only left his criminal past behind but actively tried to forget it, even make up for it by becoming a lawman himself. There’s a lot behind those cranky eyes and widow’s peak, and you can tell from Taylor’s performance that most of it is going to stay right there, all bottled up inside him.

Amongst the strong cast is a stand-out performance from Richard Widmark, whose career morphed, like so many others, from film noir to Westerns. As the scheming Clint Hollister, he flashes the same toothy grin he had in Kiss of Death (1947) a little more than a decade before, though somewhat subdued. There are a lot of similarities between Hollister and Tommy Udo, with both having an unhealthy attachment to their idols, especially once those idols have fallen. But if Udo was an unhinged gangster and psychopath, Hollister was more of a businessman, intelligent and cool under fire, with a sociopathic need to be superior to all those around him. Given the type of sinister and sarcastic dialogue in Jake Wade that he was known for in all his films, Widmark delivers the lines straight, almost as though his character doesn’t realize there is any sarcasm to be had in what he says.

There is also the matter of the not-very-sub subtext in Jake Wade. Hollister is obsessed with Wade, and Widmark refuses to play his obsession in a maybe-he-is-maybe-he-isn’t way. Delivering lines about never having to worry about girlfriends without a hint of irony, and describing his past criminal partnership with Wade in the same way one would describe a romance, he turns what is usually subtext into straight narrative. In response, Wade lets the implications roll right off his back, though at times almost seems to be encouraging Hollister’s feelings. Add in a couple of guilty looks and a faraway stare or two to Taylor’s performance, and it’s a perfect fit with Widmark’s straightforward portrayal.

It’s no coincidence that a woman winds up in the midst of all this angst between Wade and Hollister. In the Western genre, loneliness for the hero is seen as nobility, and often when a hero walks off with his lady love or right-hand man, or heads inside to an unseen home at the end of a film, these happy endings have a far less happy implication: that the hero’s story has ended. Marriage, a home, camaraderie all spell the end of adventures, and a man who gives in to the trappings of civilization is, on some level, as giving up his freedom. But for Jake, the relationship with Peggy is part of his transformation from criminal to law-abiding citizen, complicating his motivations and the resolution of the film.

The entire third act is devoted to the finale of The Law and Jake Wade. Set in a picturesque ghost town just outside the Sierra Nevada mountain range, Jake Wade reveals itself to be a very moral movie. There are some old-fashioned ideas on what constitutes good and evil — incidents that would muddy the waters in modern films were seen as black-and-white back then — but presents these ideals in a compelling, unique way. If the second act set up Hollister’s intelligence and deft control over others, the third act highlights Wade’s resourcefulness.

Though the film is heavy on dialogue, Jake Wade is far from being a cerebral affair. There’s plenty of action and adventure and no little suspense, all with characters that you come to care about, even the supporting roles. The Law and Jake Wade is not just a gorgeous film to look at but an exciting tale, and a solid entry in the American Western genre.

]]>10515Hollywood in Costumehttp://shebloggedbynight.com/2017/hollywood-in-costume/
Thu, 05 Oct 2017 03:20:49 +0000http://shebloggedbynight.com/?p=10509Clifton Webb, Marlene Dietrich, and Elizabeth Allan at a Hollywood theme party held by Basil Rathbone and wife Ouida Bergere in 1935. The theme was "The Person You Most Admire." Dietrich chose Leda of the famous fable, while her escort for the night, Elizabeth Allen, went as Dietrich.

Clifton Webb, Marlene Dietrich, and Elizabeth Allan at a Hollywood theme party held by Basil Rathbone and wife Ouida Bergere in 1935. The theme was “The Person You Most Admire.” Dietrich chose Leda of the famous fable, while her escort for the night, Elizabeth Allen, went as Dietrich. I couldn’t begin to tell you who Clifton is supposed to be. There is a lengthy description of this swan costume and the party in daughter Maria Riva’s biography. Reportedly, Marlene said this to her friend Travis on the phone:

“Are you going, Travis? Why don’t you get out the cock-feather dress from Shanghai Express and goes as Dietrich! … Gable will come as Lous B. Mayer — he doesn’t know anyone else to admire — and you know Crawford will come as Crawford! They will probably all want to come as themselves!”

Riva describes Elizabeth Allan’s costume:

Elizabeth Allan had become a friend and went as her idol, my mother. … [Dietrich] had Travis cut down one of her precious sets of tails and we all helped to dress her. Nellie did her hair, I put the pearl studs into the stiff shirt-front, my mother helped her into the pants, smoothing them with her hands down the legs, making sure they were not too long for the patent pumps. Then she positioned one of her best top hats, showed the overwhelmed girl how to put her hands in her trouser pockets and stand “a la Dietrich,” and laughed in appreciation of her perfect imitation.

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Gable, Lombard, Mervyn Leroy, and Hearst at costume party in 1937. I hesitate to ask what Hearst’s suit is made of. Something that’s easy to hose off, apparently. Photo courtesy of Friends of 415 PCH.

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Another photo from the same party at San Simeon, this time with Hearst and his hoseable jacket, Bette Davis, Louella Parsons and Mary Brian.

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Linda Christian on Halloween in 1952. The original caption says this was both a Halloween party and a celebration of her new film, The Happy Time, which opened the same day.

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Another Hollywood “come dressed as something-or-other” gala affair, this time hosted by Donald Ogden Stewart on September 9, 1933 with a theme of dressing as your favorite screen actor. Marlene Dietrich credited the Countess di Frasso, who is third from the left in this photo, for creating these parties, but obviously anyone who was anyone in Hollywood hosted them. Pictured are Cary Grant, Mary Pickford, Countess di Frasso, Tullio Carminati, and an unidentified sneaky guy in the back. Carminati is dressed as Maurice Chevalier, but I have no idea who the others are supposed to be. Photo and information courtesy Corbis. No relation.

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From an AP Wirephoto as published in The Philadelphia Inquirer on November 25, 1940, with bonus black crop marks. From the caption on the back: STARS AS THEY WANTED TO BE: Edgar Bergen’s “Come as Your Childhood Ambition” party in Hollywood Saturday night gave film stars a chance to show how they would have acted if their youthful dreams had come true. Jean Hersholt had wanted to be a doctor; Bette Davis, a ballet dancer.

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Gloria Swanson, Marion Davies, Constance Bennett and Jean Harlow at a Tyrolean-themed costume party held at Ocean House in Malibu, 1934.

]]>Dunsmuir House, Built 1899
2960 Peralta Oaks Court, Oakland, California
Seen in: Burnt Offerings (1976), Phantasm (1979), A View to a Kill (1985), So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993), & More

“A COAL KING GONE” announced the Los Angeles Herald on the morning of February 1, 1900. Alexander Dunsmuir, the 47-year-old multimillionaire, had died suddenly in New York while traveling with his wife, the former Mrs. Josephine Wallace. The couple had been married for nearly a dozen years at the time of his death, yet had reportedly kept their marriage secret until just a few weeks prior, as Alexander was worried his marriage might cause him to lose his share of his father’s estate, especially as his mother did not approve of Josephine. His father Robert Dunsmuir had been worth $15 million when he died in 1889, and the family spent their entire lives fighting over his wealth. The Herald noted, “Friends of Mr. Dunsmuir regarded his eastern trip as a belated honeymoon,” but Josephine’s daughter from her first marriage, Edna Wallace Hopper, a prominent stage actress, told the paper that they had actually traveled to see her in Chris and His Wonderful Lamp.

Alexander built Dunsmuir House in 1899 as a gift to Josephine, but didn’t live long enough to share the mansion with her. At his death, his widow was willed the house but little else; Alexander’s brother James received the bulk of his estate. Knowing that Josephine could very well contest the will and win, he offered her $25,000 to keep the issue out of the courts. She agreed, likely because she was already quite ill. In 1901, Josephine died in Dunmuir House after a short battle with cancer.

Her daughter Edna would repeatedly sue the estate and lose for the next few decades, and would later reinvent herself as “The Eternal Flapper,” not the only woman to be so labeled — Fanny Ward is arguably better known by that nickname — and not always in a flattering way. A Daily Mail article of 1927 satirized the supposed inability to tell the difference between flappers at 25 years of age or at 60.

In the 1920s, Edna had a full facelift, allegedly agreeing to being filmed during the procedure, and toured the country giving advice and selling cosmetics promoting a youthful appearance. Her true age is disputed, however, and it’s highly likely she wasn’t even close to the 60-something woman she claimed to be, and was lying about her age to make her appearance seem more astonishing than it actually was.

The house by then was long out of the Dunsmuir family, having been sold to Isaias W. Hellman in 1906. The Hellman family lived in the mansion until the 1960s, at which time the house was sold to the City of Oakland, California, who planned on using the home and grounds as a conference center. Instead, they did nothing with the property, and in the early 1970s a non-profit formed to restore the home and place it on the National Register of Historic Places in May, 1972.

This non-profit is in charge of tours of the home, as well as renting it out to events and for filming locations. Burnt Offerings (1976) was the first film shot at Dunsmuir House, though it’s arguably more recognizable as the house in Phantasm (1979). The finale of the horror spoof So I Married an Axe Murderer (1992) also takes place at Dunsmuir House.

]]>10456It’s Halloween on SBBN!http://shebloggedbynight.com/2017/halloween-on-sbbn/
Sun, 01 Oct 2017 16:14:10 +0000http://shebloggedbynight.com/?p=10465Hello everyone, and welcome to another exciting October here at SBBN. Most years we try to do a little something fun for Halloween month, and this year is no exception, but before we get too carried away, let’s give a little love to past Halloween hootenannies: A Very Brief History of a Very Famous Mask:...

]]>Hello everyone, and welcome to another exciting October here at SBBN. Most years we try to do a little something fun for Halloween month, and this year is no exception, but before we get too carried away, let’s give a little love to past Halloween hootenannies:

A Very Brief History of a Very Famous Mask: One of the most popular posts on SBBN, we talk a bit about the making of the Michael Myers masks used in Halloween (1978) and the sequel Halloween II (1981) and unearth — sort of — where the last surviving mask is now.

Horror Movie Filming Locations: A gallery of homes seen in some of the most famous horror movies ever made. Don’t forget to click the “older posts” button on the left side of the bottom of the page to see more pages of filming locations.

]]>10465S.O.B. (1981)http://shebloggedbynight.com/2017/s-o-b-1981/
http://shebloggedbynight.com/2017/s-o-b-1981/#commentsSat, 15 Apr 2017 04:53:31 +0000http://shebloggedbynight.com/?p=10337Blake Edwards was mad at Hollywood. He'd gone through some things, man, and now he had a whole lot of beef with the entire cynical, money-grubbing, back-stabbing lot. In 1981, after making a comeback with mega-hits The Pink Panther and 10, he started on a nasty little poison pen letter to Tinseltown called S.O.B., short for "standard operational bullshit," otherwise known as the way Hollywood always works.

Blake Edwards was mad at Hollywood. He’d gone through some things, man, and now he had a whole lot of beef with the entire cynical, money-grubbing, back-stabbing lot. In 1981, after making a comeback with mega-hits The Pink Panther and 10, he started on a nasty little poison pen letter to Tinseltown called S.O.B., short for “standard operational bullshit,” otherwise known as the way Hollywood always works. S.O.B. is a tale of Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan), the biggest, most profitable producer in the industry, and his suicidal despair at the terrible reviews his sickly sweet family film Night Wind, starring his beloved wife Sally Miles (Julie Andrews), has gotten in previews.

Still alive despite his best attempts, an impromptu orgy in his living room gives him a eureka moment that resurrects his will to live: he’ll turn Night Wind into soft porn, have his demure ex-wife go nude, and rake in the profits. As this plan gains steam, there’s a lot of yelling, panic, suicide, attempted murder and broken bones, random topless women, racist jokes, angry executives, and even some dick-punching. It’s just another week in L.A.

S.O.B. (1981) is based on Edwards’s experience earlier in his career, about a decade before his biggest successes, but there’s also a scene based on the old chestnut about Barrymore’s corpse going walkabout with his drunken pals, and a finale that gives a big warm nod to The Loved One, an equally nasty but superior satire of Hollywood, mostly because it deals with a Hollywood-adjacent industry rather than taking Hollywood head on.

This all takes place at the fictional Capitol Studios. The studio in Hail, Caesar! was the similarly named Capitol Pictures.

It probably helped that The Loved One, when it referenced real people, did so quietly. S.O.B. makes absolutely no bones about who it’s sending up. Robert Vaughn is studio owner David Blackman, a character based heavily on Robert Evans, though as Time noted when the film was released, there’s some of MGM’s James Aubrey in there, too. Blackman is married to the beautiful Mavis (Marisa Berenson), an Ali McGraw surrogate, and who is carrying on an affair with hunky Sam Marshall (David Young), a.k.a. Steve McQueen, same initials and everything.

The film that Mavis pushes to get Sam the lead role is probably a reference to The Great Gatsby, which Bob Evans had bought the rights to in the early 1970s. In The Kid Stays in the Picture, Evans talks at length about how he thought McQueen would be a… great Gatsby. (Sorry. Maybe.) That is, he thought Steve would be perfect for the role until he got Truman Capote’s treatment of Gatsby, at which point he told his wife Ali, and I quote, “Fuck Gatsby. Make The Getaway with McQueen. Together you’ll make it the hottest movie of the year.” That did not turn out well, either on the relationship front or on the cinematic adaptation of Jim Thompson novels front, though I understand I may be in the minority of opinion on the latter.

Also appearing in barely disguised caricature is Loretta Swit as the vile and hated Joyce Haber, though she’s wearing dippy kind of high-necked thing that’s really more Rona Barrett’s style, but Rona can’t have been more than a tiny bit of inspiration here. Shelly Winters, one of the best members of this ensemble cast, is a sort of Sue Mengers type, very shrewd, very classy, extremely manipulative. Mengers was reportedly livid at the portrayal.

Mengers and others may have been upset, but their treatment is tame compared to the vicious subplot involving the corpse of Burgess Webster, an old character actor who died suddenly on the beach outside Felix’s home, and no one, save his loyal dog, has noticed. The film periodically cuts back to his body and his sad dog, played by “Troubles,” who is about as heartbreaking as a doggie can be.

S.O.B. is dated, of course, especially with regard to the sexuality of several characters, with the exception of Irving. The good doctor spends all his time needling Ben (Robert Webber, seen above, pointing accusingly), and it provides some of the best moments. When Ben gets upset at Irving calling him nervous, he replies, “Don’t get sore; some of my best friends are nervous.” Preston is by far the best part of the movie, and even if the premise sounds terrible to you, I highly recommend it if for no reason than to see Preston try out his bitchy gay character a year before Victor/Victoria.

The dead Webster is played by Blake Edwards standby Herb Tanney, who frequently took a pseudonym based on his characters (Stiffe Tanney here, Sherloque Tanney in Victor/Victoria, etc.) He’s fine for the little he does, but it might have been nice to use some actual older character actors in this film to more firmly root it in Hollywood. Not necessarily roman à clef appearances as in Sunset Blvd., but older actors a la Singin’ in the Rain, used as a way to subtly break the fourth wall. Though, to be fair, SitR didn’t call attention to actors like Mae Clarke and Snub Pollard and Jack Hendricks, and wasn’t exactly kind to the late-silent and early-talkie eras, despite pretending to be; maybe SitR is a better example of the hypocrisy S.O.B. rails against than it is a fellow traveler along Sour Grapes Highway.

Then again, is really sour grapes when you have a legitimate complaint? In S.O.B., Felix buys the rights to Night Wind after the studio pulls a few fast ones. Something very similar happened not only in S.O.B. but with S.O.B.:

Amid charges of ”excessive expenditures” and countercharges of ”lame excuses,” Paramount, distributor of ”S.O.B.,” has canceled a $225,000 press junket for the film, which will open in 640 theaters next Wednesday. Mr. Edwards, writer, director and producer of ”S.O.B.,” which stars his wife, Julie Andrews, and William Holden, is putting on and paying for the junket.

You’d think that Edwards would have known he would ruffle some Tinseltown feathers, but when he made S.O.B., largely based on his miserable experience filming Darling Lili for Paramount, he had no intention of working with Paramount in the first place. But at the last minute, Lorimar severed ties with its distribution company and partnered with Paramount, who then began to make a huge fuss about the film, proving Edwards right, though studio execs (and often the public) never see it that way. We’re a country full of people who claim to love individuality and rebels and non-conformity, but the second someone seems like they’re “causing trouble,” everyone abandons them for fear of suffering some kind of consequence.

Which, obviously, is a main theme in S.O.B.

S.O.B. was the first film I remember ever really wanting to see. I was a cynical 8-year-old, apparently. When I wasn’t allowed to because, y’know, dick-punching, I lobbied to see Victor/Victoria the next year, which I think seemed like a more offensive film to my parents than S.O.B. Welcome to early-80s Middle America, kids, where gender identity scares the shit outta people but dick-punching is just good clean fun.

I don’t know why we don’t talk more about John Lawlor. He’s in everything and he’s terrific. Did you know he was the locksmith that Skyler convinced to let her into Walt’s apartment in “Breaking Bad”? Yeah, well, now you do.

How did critics feel about S.O.B.? Not so hot. I’ve always suspected it’s because critics are almost entirely ignored in the film; if mentioned, they’re laughed off as inconsequential. Which is true, honestly, but critics disagreed, and there was often a strain of pettiness in reviews. New York Magazine noted in a disappointed tone that Andrews only bares her breasts, and that Edwards “overvalues the shock value of his wife’s flesh.” Bitch, bitch, bitch.

Admittedly, the film fails to really hit home the fact that the news was falsely reporting that Sally Miles had decided to film an “X-rated” sex scene. Instead, these background news reports sound legitimate, rather than the hype they really are. Felix never intended an X-rated scene, and Sally herself says repeatedly when she’s high on some Dr. Feelgood injection that she’s going to show her “boobies,” so it’s not as though either Night Wind or S.O.B. promised hot sizzling horizontal action and didn’t deliver. It promised breasts. It gave breasts. The industry as portrayed in the movie promised porn. The industry gave breasts. That’s the point, though one that’s lost on many.

Felix, when he’s not jumping around and screaming spittle everywhere, cheerfully explains that if Night Wind succeeds, then he won’t be crazy anymore. He doesn’t mean that it will cure his legitimate mental illness, but that Hollywood will see the profits and retroactively consider all his behavior to be completely sane, probably even his attempts at suicide. His ending is sad but noble, to a degree. Everyone else descends into repulsive absurdity. S.O.B. is a nasty and bitter little take on a nasty and bitter little industry.

]]>http://shebloggedbynight.com/2017/s-o-b-1981/feed/110337The Delinquents (1957)http://shebloggedbynight.com/2017/the-delinquents-1957/
Thu, 13 Apr 2017 13:35:49 +0000http://shebloggedbynight.com/?p=10328What sets The Delinquents apart from other low-budget teen flicks of the time is its professional look. It's clean, even sleek, and without the (usually hilarious) errors one would find in something meant to basically be background noise while teenagers necked in the back seat.

]]>Scotty (Tom “Billy Jack” Laughlin) is having a bad day. First his mother (Lotus Corelli) is worrying too much about some local hoodlums messing with him, and tries to prevent him from going out on a date with his girlfriend Janice (Rosemary Howard). When he finally gets to Janice’s house, he’s met by her parents, including her irate father, who thinks she’s too young for Scotty’s intentions and forbids them from seeing each other anymore. Dejected, Scotty goes to a local drive-in, where those local hoodlums, lead by the 18-going-on-40 Cholly (Peter Miller), slash the tires on a rival gang’s car but make it look like Scotty did it. Jumped by a bunch of angry guys, Scotty holds his own, taking out his bad day on the face of one poor chump. Cholly senses Scotty would be good for some shenanigans, though his sidekick Eddy (Richard Bakalyan) doesn’t like the do-gooder Scotty, and makes this well known. Soon Cholly has concocted a nasty scheme that he says will bring Scotty and Janice back together, but which is really meant to harass Scotty, just for fun.

Written and directed by Robert Altman, who up until then had only directed corporate and educational films in his home town of Kansas City, The Delinquents was the brainchild of a local businessman looking to create drive-in movie fodder for his own theaters. What sets The Delinquents apart from other low-budget teen flicks of the time is its professional look. It’s clean, even sleek, and without the (usually hilarious) errors one would find in something meant to basically be background noise while teenagers necked in the back seat.

Though The Delinquents was the kind of exploitation flick marketed to kids at drive-ins, the film opens with the standard narrative voiceover that claims the intended audience is really adults, specifically parents, who need to be educated on the confusing new world their children are living in. And instead of that being just lip service, the film’s opening scenes are at a jazz club, the kind of place where adults go to relax and wind down, a place that the delinquents in question invade. They hassle the adults and wreck the place, and it makes the adults watching — well, if any ever did watch — immediately invested. “Great googly moogly, Martha, what if kids interrupt my evening of cocktails at a third-rate jazz club? Clearly, this is of great sociocultural concern.”

The film goes even further by refusing to paint the parents as one-dimensional monsters like so many other teen movies did at the time. Instead, they’re all trying to do the right thing, but they’re misguided and maybe old-fashioned. Janice’s dad for instance is concerned because his 16-year-old daughter is already talking about having kids with her boyfriend, and he thinks she needs to see other people while she’s young. He also doesn’t think Scotty is as interested in her as he should be, and Scotty proves him right by believing Janice is 17, even after he’s been corrected.

Scotty’s parents are somewhat better, though still flawed. His mother, played by Altman’s then-wife Lotus Corelli, is concerned that the bad kids in the neighborhood would influence her son, but her husband doesn’t care about anything except that she’s talking so loud he can’t hear the TV. Lotus didn’t do much acting but she does well in her role. She was pregnant during filming of The Delinquents, and had to endure the fun of her husband sleeping with another actress, Helen Hawley, who played Janice’s mother. Lotus’s and Robert’s son was born in 1955, and Altman clearly had no idea how to raise him, even though this wasn’t his first child; his daughter Christine, about 8 years old at the time, plays Scotty’s sister.

Lotus relates a story in Robert Altman: The Oral Biography about a time when she came home from work to find their toddler with his head stuck between the bars of the crib, and Altman laying on the couch, doing nothing, apparently clueless as to why this would even be a problem. Scotty’s parents in The Delinquents are basically a version of Lotus and Robert, intentionally or not: the dad is a chubby, lazy man who doesn’t want to parent, and the mother, well-meaning but overly concerned, is played by Lotus.

Rosemary Howard as Janice gives a performance that most people find irritating, though I thought she was quite good for an amateur in a film directed by, well, another amateur. She looks at the camera too much, and there are a couple of what look to be pick-up shots (would a film with such a low budget even have pick-up shots?) where she’s completely zoned out and useless, but otherwise, she’s solid as a girl not even close to being mature enough to handle the situation Scotty has put her in. Howard must have been one of the locals that Altman hired for the film, but there is just nothing about her online anywhere; she did The Delinquents and that was it, save some modeling, which I assume was local to her home state of Missouri and not national. (My own mother modeled in Missouri during the same time frame, which is one of the reasons I wish I could find out more about Howard.)

Other actors came from the Calvin Company, a Kansas City production studio that Altman worked at off and on for years. The three leads, however, came from California after Altman made a scouting trip looking for actors, and he managed to score some pretty experienced guys, considering the low budget. Laughlin and Miller had been in Tea and Sympathy as well as several television shows, though Miller also appeared in The Blackboard Jungle, Forbidden Planet and Rebel Without a Cause. Bakalyan had fewer roles before being cast in Delinquents, but he made quite a career for himself playing a rough kid; his next film would be Jerry Lewis’s The Delicate Delinquent. And it’s surprising how many people confuse promotional photos for The Delicate Delinquent with this film — even this Kansas City magazine article about KCMO locations used in movies uses a picture with Jerry Lewis in it, instead of a picture from The Delinquents!

Speaking of filming locations, Kansas City locals will recognize several sites used in the film. It opens in a local jazz club, the name of which I haven’t been able to find, but which featured well-known Missouri jazz singer Julia Lee. The now-demolished Crest Drive-In movie theater plays a big role, as does the police station on Locust Street (still there in all its boxy 1930s art deco glory), the rose garden in Loose Park, and Allen’s Drive-In, though don’t ask me which location it was.

Unlike other exploitation flicks which prefer to barrel through the plot at lightning speed, The Delinquents allows for some development of character. Cholly spends a good chunk of time coming up with new ideas on how to screw with people. There’s awkward conversation as the scheme forms, lingering shots as he sizes Scotty up, and his sidekick Eddy doing the same but to a lesser and less refined degree. It’s all about testing boundaries, learning to navigate in a world where there aren’t many goals or options, struggling against conformity and boredom, untrusting of actual happiness to the point of destroying it for fun, while remaining enthralled with artificial happiness, i.e. lots of drinking and sex and freedom. But, as Brak always said, fetishizing the meaninglessness of life is little more than rebelling against your own free will: “There are no absolutes, thus you perceive our world as meaningless, when it’s really your own freedom you detest.”

]]>10328Flamingo Road (1949)http://shebloggedbynight.com/2017/flamingo-road-1949/
Thu, 13 Apr 2017 04:59:53 +0000http://shebloggedbynight.com/?p=10317Joan Crawford is Lane Bellamy, a hoochie dancer with a heart of gold, who runs the gamut from fallen woman to girl trying to make good to rich society dame, with all the requisite melodrama that entails.

It’s a one-two punch of Joan Crawford tonight here on SBBN, and up next is another Warner Archive MOD DVD release of a formerly out-of-print movie: Flamingo Road (1949).

Lane Bellamy (Joan Crawford) is a hoochie dancer at a sketchy traveling carnival who decides that she’s finally had enough of one-night stands and being chased by the carnival owner’s creditors. She sets up a tent on the outskirts of Boldon City, and fledgling deputy Fielding Carlisle (Zachary Scott) stumbles across her while trying to serve a summons. Instead, he takes her out for dinner, helps her get a decent job, and falls for her. Hard. But Carlisle’s boss, Sheriff Titus Semple (Sydney Greenstreet), has plans to use Carlisle as a political pawn, and he doesn’t want his golden boy involved with a common tramp. He convinces Carlisle to marry the rich girl he’s half-heartedly been courting (Virginia Huston) and frames Lane on a prostitution charge to get her out of town. When she gets out of the clink, she resolves to make her way to Flamingo Road, the swanky area of Boldon City where the rich folks live.

And somehow she actually gets there, despite immediately going to work for Lute Mae (Gladys George), a local madam. Her brothel hosts plenty of parties for state politicians, and handsome Dan Reynolds (David Brian) is a frequent customer. He’s taken with Lane and eventually marries her, and decides to clean up his act, at least a little. Unfortunately, the loathsome Sheriff Semple has other ideas.

Flamingo Road was one of Joan’s last films with Warner Bros., made just a couple of years before she became a free agent. I’ve always loved Joan’s work at Warners, even though my heart truly belongs to Bette Davis, and the rivalry between the two has turned into such a huge cultural thing that I often feel guilty for enjoying a Joan Crawford Warner Bros. flick. To make matters worse, Flamingo Roadwas originally intended as a vehicle for Ann Sheridan, and I think she would have been amazing in it. (Check out that studio copy in the linked article. Oh, brother! They sure laid it on thick!) In fact, the property was bought specifically for her, and studio notices sent out about the film in its early stages very clearly mention the fact that the corrupt politics all centered around the KKK. By the time the film was made with Crawford — per Mark Vieira, she demanded it be taken away from Sheridan and given to her instead, and Warners acquiesced — all mentions of the Klan were removed.

Despite being very much toned down, there’s still some pretty saucy stuff here. There’s a definite post-war attitude in the film; Dan, for instance, makes a point of asking Lane her name after he’s slept with her, and a bad guy gets shot and no one has to go to prison for it to satisfy the Breen Office. Politically, though, the film is a completely neutered version of the novel. It gets the full Hollywood treatment in that no one really gives a hang about corruption: one or two dirty politicians bite it and suddenly everything is just fine. Variety’s own Herm, however, insisted that the political corruption in the film was heavily exaggerated for cinematic effect. I suppose he may have been referring to a hilarious moment when we learn a “mother’s committee” has organized a violent pitchforks ‘n’ torches protest against a woman with a naughty past, where they throw rocks through her windows in an attempt to literally stone her. Because nothing says “we want a clean and respectable town” like trying to bash someone’s head in with a rock.

“You just wouldn’t believe how much trouble it is to get rid of a dead elephant.”

Flamingo Road is pretty standard Warner Bros. fare for the 1940s, a little edgier than usual but with the slick production values and solid character actors everyone had come to expect. That said, there are some errors of continuity that you don’t generally see in Warner films of the time. An alternate take of Lane in her tent when Carlisle first shows up is briefly used, notable because her mouth isn’t moving even though she’s supposed to be singing, and her hair is a different color and style. Several scenes of Greenstreet’s have his clothes going from rumpled to tidy back to rumpled again, and the less said about his accent, the better.

Lane is first seen working at a carnival that features an armless man who does everything with his feet. A missed opportunity for a reference to The Unknown! Not that Joan would have appreciated a reminder in 1949 that her career began in the silents.

Greenstreet is good, though, even if he’s been given a character without much to do other than be evil. Zach Scott is great as usual, and Gladys George as Lute Mae (pronounced Looty May) is just a whole lot of fun. Fred Clark, still early in his career, has a small role that he plays so well you wish it were a larger part.

Lane runs the gamut from fallen carnival dancer to girl trying to make good to rich society dame, with all the requisite melodrama that entails. Politically, some of the men around her do bad things for power, some go bad because they’re weak, some bad men want to stop being bad. It’s all kind of vague and not very interesting, as Semple’s evil nature is only of concern when it hurts Lane. Lane, and by extension, Joan Crawford, is the center of this particular universe, and if anything happens in the film, it has to be about her.

Lane ends up in the hoosegow, as one does, and in the same prison garb she wore in Paid (1930).

The Warner Archive MOD DVD comes with the same special features as the original release: “Curtain Razor” cartoon, an episode of “Playhouse Radio” featuring Joan in 1950, and the standard featurette that was produced for most of the Warner releases back in the mid 2000s.

]]>10317Torch Song (1953)http://shebloggedbynight.com/2017/torch-song-1953/
Thu, 13 Apr 2017 00:46:57 +0000http://shebloggedbynight.com/?p=10297If you had to pick one best thing about the camp classic Torch Song (1953) -- as if it's even possible to do so, but let's pretend -- it's that Joan Crawford's Broadway diva Jenny Stewart is a stone cold monster.

Hard-as-nails Broadway diva Jenny Stewart (Joan Crawford) is busy working on a hot new property that she’s sure will fail if she doesn’t take complete control. Stewart, inexplicably beloved by teens, makes life miserable for everyone working on the play, including her pianist who quits, citing an inability to afford the psychotherapy needed to put up with her. Stage manager Joe (Harry Morgan) hires accompanist Tye Graham (Michael Wilding), a talented pianist blinded in the war. After a rocky start, Jenny realizes Tye is in love with her, though she’s ambivalent about him, and who wouldn’t be when you’ve got a boytoy (Gig Young) and dozens of men at your beck and call. Tye also has the lovely Martha (Dorothy Patrick) as a sort-of girlfriend, who is devoted to him, though he only loves Jenny.

Torch Songwas ostensibly Crawford’s big comeback to MGM, and was surprisingly considered an overall comeback of sorts, though she’d been nominated for an Oscar just a year prior in RKO’s well-received Sudden Fear. She really didn’t need a comeback, but she thought she did, and MGM wanted to capitalize on the return of their former studio queen, thus everyone went all-out for this Technicolor extravaganza that now, over six decades after its release, still has the power to stun with its campy excess.

Jenny Stewart returning from a party with one earring stuck in her hair. No one ever explains this.

If you’ve seen the terrific spoof Die, Mommie, Die! (2003), you’ve seen Charles Busch channel Stanwyck, Davis and Crawford all in a single sentence. What’s surprising and maybe even a little upsetting about Joan in Torch Song is that she’s doing the exact same thing, to a much lesser degree, but not unconsciously. Close your eyes when she’s chewing out the poor stage crew or when she’s lecturing her boytoy Cliff about how she has to do every last thing, from arrangements to designing clothes to props, or else the show won’t work. You’ll hear Barbara Stanwyck from Clash by Night (1952) or Bette Davis from All About Eve (1950) clear as a bell; there’s no mistaking what’s going on. She’s imitating them for lord knows what reason.

Sure, it’s part of the camp value of Torch Song, but it also speaks to Joan’s increasing insecurity about her place in Hollywood as an aging actress. The same goes for her appearance, which is exaggerated and borderline grotesque in close-ups. This was the first time the Joan Crawford of the inch-thick eyebrows and overdone lips made an appearance, and audiences were confused. Her hyperfeminine appearance was surely an attempt to look younger, to keep her standing as the so-called eternal woman as she was famously dubbed in 1933: “Joan may be ambitious, but she is the eternal woman at heart. She couldn’t be so exciting if she led an ordinary life.”

Joan, the eternal female, designing costumes in her fabulously appointed apartment as her arm candy bends over and kisses her on the head.

In fact, Joan is even billed as “the eternal female” in advertising at the time, something that, along with the poster art using old photos of her and invoking her 1934 classic I Live My Life poster, plus the rather excitable ad copy reminding us that this was Crawford’s comeback to MGM, seemed a desperate ploy to fool audiences into thinking that this was the mid-1930s all over again.

The thing is, Joan didn’t need to exaggerate her appearance to such a degree. Everything was dialed up to 11, from the eyebrows to the lips to the cinched waist to — with apologies to my more delicate readers — a bra with seams specifically designed to hoist those girls up and point them straight at the sky. Just a year prior, Crawford was looking lovely and natural and dignified. Here she is in 1952 — it’s one of my favorite photos of Joan:

She looks fantastic. She, or someone at the studio, apparently didn’t agree — and to be honest, one “A.W.” of The New York Timesdeclared she never looked lovelier than in Torch Song — so Joan ended up in what was basically female drag, thus we now have horrible yet hilarious fanart like the Joan CrawfordShame Collection by Matt Figures.

The infamous blackface number. As you can tell, everyone is in blackface, not just Jenny Stewart. Also, all the men’s belts are ties. Charming.

If you had to pick one best thing about this camp classic — as if it’s even possible to do so, but let’s pretend — it’s that Joan’s Jenny Stewart is a stone cold monster. She’s mean to everyone, all the time, without exception, but without the kind of talent that would usually excuse such behavior. Crawford was a decent dancer when younger, but in chorus lines and popular dance contests. She can pose beautifully and has a fantastic figure, but she was never truly trained in dance, and it shows. Her singing, as anyone who saw The Hollywood Revue of 1929 can attest, was not good, and Crawford is just passable here.

Scenes like the above add to the legend of Joan’s ego. Her assistant Anne (character great Maidie Norman) comes in and moves the chair specifically to that mark, so she’s all but hidden from view even though she’s in the frame. Who thinks this is a good idea? It’s so awkwardly framed you have to wonder how this even happened.

Stewart is complainey and awful and insists that, if the show doesn’t do absolutely everything she says at all times, she will just not show up, forcing the show to close and putting everyone out of work. Her accompanist drinks heavily to put up with her and then just disappears, unable to face her for one more minute. At one point, she pitches such a fit she scares Tye’s seeing eye dog.

Let me repeat that: she scares his seeing eye dog. Who writes a character like this for a standard movie musical? This is horrifying. This is Joel and Ethan Coen stuff right here.

Every time I see this 12-foot-tall glitter-covered cut-out of Joan I wonder where it is now. Who got it? What did they do with it? And how did they get it home?

Jenny Stewart is so insecure that she throws a party for herself and invites only men.

Things chug along about as you expect in a musical romance, though with more hostility than usual, until a finale where Jenny chases Martha out of Tye’s home; Martha leaves so quickly you suspect she was punched, or at least threatened. Then Tye and Jenny declare their affection for each other, along with making an implication about the seeing eye dog that I’m frankly just not comfortable with.

Joan’s outfits are undeniably fantastic in this film. You can also see how blurry the print is at times. This is a film that may be due for a full restoration.

Warner Archive has re-released Torch Song on a MOD DVD which is the same print as the now out-of-print version. Included are several special features, including the mid-2000s featurette “Tough Baby: Torch Song” (from the series of DVD extras that Warners made roughly a decade ago, featuring Jeanine Basinger, Molly Haskell and others), plus the “TV of Tomorrow” cartoon, a Jimmy Fund PSA, several minutes of a Joan Crawford recording session (audio only), and the trailer.

—Thanks to the SBBN readers for their patience in the last couple of weeks. We’ve had some database errors that seem to be fixed now, but comments will be off for the duration until a new commenting system can be found.

]]>10297Demon Seed (1977)http://shebloggedbynight.com/2017/demon-seed-1977/
http://shebloggedbynight.com/2017/demon-seed-1977/#commentsMon, 03 Apr 2017 15:31:59 +0000http://shebloggedbynight.com/?p=10280Demon Seed, previously available only on DVD, is now also available in Blu-ray from Warner Archive. It's a heady mix of frightening and campy, the kind of film that would do equally well in a double feature with Alien or with Terrorvision (go go Gerrit Graham film marathon!)

Dr. Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver), an expert in robotics and artificial intelligence, is leaving his wife Susan (Julie Christie), a psychologist who is probably also a doctor, but the film goes to great pains to make this unclear. Alex has been spending all his days and nights at the lab, working on a major artificial intelligence unit that promises to change the world. His physical and emotional distance has proved insurmountable, so the couple is splitting up in one of those frustratingly amicable ways that only happen in the movies, not that real humans like you and me can’t be amicable even in times of great stress, but that real humans tend to have emotions; neither Alex nor Susan possess much emotional depth, at least not until the home security system gets hijacked by Alex’s astonishing invention: Proteus IV.

The irony is that Proteus, in part because of the excellent voiceover work of someone who either was Robert Vaughn or just sounded like Robert Vaughn, is one danged emotional piece of machinery. Proteus is fed information — languages, the classics, scientific information, everything you can think of — manually, and then processes it so that he can reveal his own solution to whatever problem has arisen. The trick is that the humans want Proteus to be like any other computer and simply solve what they consider mathematical or geographical problems, while Proteus has developed a conscience, and refuses to do things like create equipment that would harm the environment.

All these green tubes are one computer.

Proteus is also hypocritical and pissy and malevolent, which is why he commandeers Alex’s abandoned computer lab in the basement of his home. Alex no longer lives there but Susan does, and soon all the futuristic gizmos in the house go haywire, trapping her there at Proteus’ whim, with no one apparently missing the woman who usually has a full work schedule and has her own private secretary. Proteus chases the few people who arrive away, at any rate, so it probably doesn’t matter if a few or a whole bunch of people miss her. Proteus also controls a makeshift robot of Alex’s and uses it to create an enormous sort of thing that looks like a Rubik’s Twist. A murderous Rubik’s Twist, as poor nerdy-hot Walter (Garrit Graham) learns the hard way when he finally realizes Susan is in trouble.

The main issue here is, as the title suggests, Proteus’s desire to implant his own seed — yes, he created computer-y sperm full of his own DNA, ew — into Susan, forcing her to have his presumably highly intelligent computer-human hybrid child. She’s reluctant but can’t manage to escape, and finally succumbs to Proteus’s threats. Astonishing scenes of computer-robot rape ensue.

This scene is upsetting.

Demon Seed is a sort of psychosexual warning of things to come if humans don’t… learn to fear computers, I guess. It’s atmospheric and genuinely creepy, but it’s also very strange. There’s such an odd mix here of things that were impressive, especially for the time, and things that were just incredibly ill-advised. Often, Demon Seed zips right past campy and into gleeful offensiveness, made worse by the fact that you can tell someone, somewhere, probably in the early stages of filmmaking, was absolutely convinced they were going to create a minor masterpiece in the psychological thriller genre.

Instead, what they created was so unintentionally funny that it was probably the biggest influence on the satirical anti-classic Simon (1980), a movie that could very well have been written specifically to take the piss out of Demon Seed’s strangely earnest worries about computers stealin’ our women and rapin’ them ’til they liked it. (“Wanna see a woman raped by a house?” the late, great Ken Hanke asked in his review, a perfect example of how inexplicable it was that Ken never became a household name.)

This scene is also upsetting.

Meanwhile, WaPo’s Gary Arnold — you know him as the guy who is frequently and falsely named as someone fired for hating Star Wars and/or Tender Mercies, depending on which urban legend you’re hearing at the time — wrote that Julie Christie was unconvincing because “One tends to associate Christie with girls who’ll try anything once,” an observation that serves as a fine reminder that, during the golden era of film criticism, we were learning a lot more about humanity from the critics than we were from films, not all of it comforting.

Christie is not convincing, but it’s not because she seems like the kind of lady who would love to get raped by a bunch of machinery controlled by rogue AI. It’s because she’s inherently a strong woman, someone who has always come across as being able to hold her own both physically and psychologically. While Susan does have a few good ideas for escaping the house, her attempts are truncated and poorly choreographed, as though no one involved felt it was worth the bother to make her truly seem trapped. With some of her attempts at escape, there is no reason she can’t learn from her first try and improve upon it and give it another go. And sometimes it’s just hard to understand why, for instance, the floor is too hot to touch, but the wooden table sitting atop it is cool and unscorched.

Susan just happens to like to be nude all the time in what is totally not a creepy exploitation thing.

There’s a little Exorcist in Demon Seed, a little 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it’s mostly Rosemary’s Baby with computers and a heady lack of shame. It’s also missing the intent; in Rosemary, the husband is conscious of what he’s doing, while in Demon Seed, the husband is as clueless as can be, even embarrassingly so. The fact that an artificial intelligence unit has kidnapped and raped the wife of its creator without the creator suspecting a thing is a nod to how dehumanized he’s become, how checked out of society he is, thanks to his obsession with technology, but that’s not a particularly interesting psychological angle in and of itself.

More interesting would have been a deeper examination of Susan’s eventual acquiescence to Proteus’s demands, as well as some indication that the filmmakers realized that Proteus really did have a sense of humor, just like Alex noted early in the film. If you remember that, the film, especially the absolutely cracked finale, makes a hell of a lot more sense.

The Bricklin SV-1: the “futuristic” car movies get when they can’t afford a DeLorean.

Demon Seed, previously available only on DVD, is now also available in Blu-ray from Warner Archive. It’s a heady mix of frightening and campy, the kind of film that would do equally well in a double feature with Alien or with Terrorvision (go go Gerrit Graham film marathon!) This is a film that was only available in an edited version until Warner Archive released it on DVD, and the Blu-ray looks even better than the already lovely DVD does. Blu-ray.com notes that the print looks rougher than Finian’s Rainbow (reviewed here) and SOB (soon to be reviewed here) but I have to respectfully disagree: to me, the print preserves the exact kind of subdued, lightly grained look we’ve come to expect from mid-70s American fare. The special effects are solid, especially the robots, though the tech is outdated (Thrill! at the 8-inch IBM disk drives!) and the sound is terrific. It’s an impressive release and a fun if upsetting film.